I quit my job yesterday. Never fails to surprise me that, no matter how much it’s time to go, pulling the trigger will really freak you out.

Fortunately, a few minutes later I got to have a good laugh. My boss responded to my resignation email with an IM response of, “WTF!” Heh. He’s good folks. 🙂 (I resigned in email because I was working at home yesterday afternoon, and he wasn’t going to be in Waterloo til today.)

I haven’t talked about it much, but I also haven’t really made it a secret that I’ve not been happy at my current job. I learned after starting that there were a number of things that weren’t communicated to me accurately (or at all) before I started. Then eight weeks after I started, my manager left. (Note: when your manager is job hunting while hiring you, it’s not a great sign.)

I managed as best I could, and kvetched to those unfortunate enough to be close enough to me that that’s part of their friendship duties. On the positive side, it also pushed me to pursue other things I like doing, like freelance writing and whatnot.

I am firmly of the opinion that everything happens for a reason. There’ve been some valuable things that’ve happened as a result of nine months I’ve spent here, but what the big reason is, I don’t yet know. I’ll find out eventually.

That said, I am ecstatic to be leaving. The “I don’t care” has set in, and it’s wonderful. (I was robbed of it at my last job, what with having been laid off.) I feel a little bit bad that my boss has to jump through a ridiculous number of paperwork hoops, but hey, I guess that’s part of the job. (It was extra sticky because it’s company policy that your last day can’t be vacation, and since I fly out to France next Friday, that was exactly the situation.)

I tried here. I mean, when you’re in the tunnel, what else do you do? But the deck was stacked against me. I don’t fit in with the other people on my team. Or the department, really. I don’t like call centre operations. I don’t like the systems or apps. I don’t like testing on evenings and weekends. I don’t like being essentially glorified tech support.

Now, it’s a big company, so you’d think there’d be plenty of other places for me to go internally, but alas, no. Sure, people move around all the time, but I’m “special”. I looked into several of the Comms groups. Basically, they don’t think I have enough experience for a senior role, and they think I’m way too experienced for a junior role (plus, massive pay cut).

On the plus side, though, that made my options nice and clear: out. A wise man once said that our audacious resume goal is to not need one. Honestly, I never figured that’d be me. But these things surprise you sometimes.

A recruiter contact pinged me about my new position, I arranged lunch with the company’s powers that be, we met on Wednesday, they said they wanted me that afternoon, and I received and signed the paperwork yesterday afternoon. Sure, I sent them my resume as a courtesy, but the recruiter who connected me to them didn’t have it, and I don’t even think they called my references. (Whew, good thing I didn’t waste money on bribes!)

Traditionally I take the Fight Club/dooce approach to work: don’t talk about it. Sure, an occasional anecdote about bizarre culture or co-worker behaviour, but no naming of names and such in public. And that will remain the case retrospectively. However, things are going to change a bit for the future. You see, one of the fundamentals of my new job will be to make my presence (and, especially, assistance) as ubiquitous as possible online. The more people who know who I am, the more people I can help, which is very good.

I am going to a company called AideRSS as their Community Manager and Social Media Relations person. (Although it’s a startup, so I think they’re in violation of hipness rules that my title doesn’t contain the word “ninja” or similar.) 🙂

My job will be to evangelize, spread the word, help people out, get more folks using and developing with the products, liaise between users and the dev community and the folks I work with, etc. Or, to utilize the semi-inside joke that’s been tickling my friends to no end: I am going to be a professional New Media Douchebag. (Mr. MacLeod got the terminology slightly wrong, but the spirit is correct.) I will don cape and tights and cruise the interwebs looking for people in RSS need, and will swoop down to their rescue. It pleases me that folks who’ve seen the job description have noted it’s pretty much perfect for me. I like to think so.

And I will bring cookies on my first day. You see, when I started where I work now, no one told me that the tradition is that you bring in treats on your first day, and on your birthday. So I didn’t bring my first day treats until I’d been here eight weeks (also when my manager left). Which, if you know me, is just the sort of thing to spark a superstition. I mean, look how this gig turned out.

And so, now I will arrive at the new office on the 26th (right after returning from France!) bearing cookies. Two kinds, just to be sure. 🙂

AideRSS has a really interesting product. I’ve tried it out a couple times and just installed the FireFox Extension for Google Reader. It will be interesting to see the product develop – and even more interesting to see how you develop the community manager position at the company.

I hope you’ll blog about your experience so that we can all learn both about start up life and the evolution of the community manager position.

Yup, part of what excites me is that I’ll be the user base/potential user base liaison. Always good to be able to give the dev group REAL info on what people are asking for, glaringly unfilled niches/needs, etc.

And yeah, it’s such a new position (industry-wide, for the most part), that it’ll definitely be an interesting work in progress. On the plus side, everyone who knows me and has seen the job posting has said it’s basically my dream job, so that’s encouraging. 🙂